The Republican Party has the opportunity to name at least two women to high-ranking national security posts in the next Congress and the incoming Trump administration, history-making moves that could help the GOP mend fences after a bruising campaign season that alienated many female voters.

Sen. Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire, who narrowly lost her bid for a second term, is in the mix for Defense secretary, while Rep. Kay Granger of Texas is campaigning to take the gavel of the House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee. Both positions have, until now, only been held by men.

U.S. military forces deployed to Europe are tasked with two missions: Build cooperation among NATO allies and support operations in more dangerous corners of the globe. But as Russia, America’s Cold War nemesis, flexes its military muscle, these forces, which have dwindled in size in recent decades, are again on the front lines. Military leaders now say Russia is the greatest threat to U.S. security.

Tucked at the very end of the Senate Armed Services Committee’s 678-page report on the annual Pentagon policy bill is a wonky analysis from Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia detailing his reservations about making swift and wholesale changes to the Pentagon bureaucracy.

A hawkish Democrat who is the party's presumptive vice presidential nominee, Kaine ultimately supported the defense authorization bill, despite his concerns about the organizational and administrative changes championed by the committee chairman, John McCain of Arizona.

For the second time in a week, Senate Democrats united to block the chamber’s consideration of the annual Pentagon spending bill, pushing off until at least September consideration of the massive measure.

The vote was 55-42 on a motion to invoke cloture on the motion to proceed to the bill (S 3000) — a procedural vote to advance the measure that fell short of the 60 votes required for adoption.

The Navy has acknowledged that it will not receive its next aircraft carrier, dubbed the CVN-78, until November, two months after the service had planned. The delay is the latest in a series of technical glitches, cost overruns and other problems with the program, which McCain has had in his sights for years.

The House and Senate Armed Services Committees can trace their clout on Capitol Hill and within the Pentagon to one simple fact: The defense authorization has been signed into law annually for more than half a century.

The panels’ unprecedented 54-year legislative streak gives them tremendous authority over Pentagon policy and spending priorities, and allows them to take a much more muscular approach to oversight than many other congressional committees.

The House and Senate Armed Services committees can trace their clout on Capitol Hill and within the Pentagon to one simple fact: The defense authorization has been signed into law annually for more than half a century.

The panels’ unprecedented 54-year legislative streak gives them tremendous authority over Pentagon policy and spending priorities, and allows them to take a much more muscular approach to oversight than many other congressional committees.

The House began debate late Tuesday on the fiscal 2017 defense spending bill, lining up amendment consideration for the $575.8 billion measure on Wednesday under a veto threat from the White House.

The House Rules Committee made 75 amendments in order for floor consideration of the bill (HR 5293 ), but rejected two dealing with the rights of LGBT people, two days after an LGBT nightclub in Orlando became the setting for the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history.

U.S. military forces deployed to Europe are tasked with two missions: Build cooperation among NATO allies and support operations in more dangerous corners of the globe. But as Russia, America’s Cold War nemesis, flexes its military muscle, these forces, which have dwindled in size in recent decades, are again on the front lines. Military leaders now say Russia is the greatest threat to U.S. security.

That fact is not lost on Gen. Frank Gorenc, the four-star U.S. Air Force commander in Europe, who has seen Congress’ interest in his theater spike. What was recently viewed by lawmakers as a place to cut costs is now the opposite.

The Senate Armed Services Committee’s version of the annual defense bill is reigniting a long-simmering debate over the Guantanamo Bay detention facility with a new provision that would allow the Defense Department to plan and design a stateside facility to one day house the detainees.

The text of the fiscal 2017 defense authorization bill, obtained by CQ Roll Call, would keep existing prohibitions on Guantanamo’s closure, including blocking any funds authorized in the bill to be used for actually constructing a stateside replacement.

The rule also contains a provision that, upon adoption, would automatically modify the bill to strike provisions that would require women between the ages of 18 and 26 to register with the draft. Instead, it would require a report on the current and future need for a centralized registration system for military selective service and whether it should include women.

"This is a dead-of-night attempt to take an important issue off the table, and I think people will probably see through this tactic," House Armed Services ranking Democrat Adam Smith of Washington said Tuesday.

House Armed Services Chairman Mac Thornberry, R-Texas, used Tuesday’s terrorist attacks in Brussels to blast the administration for failing to submit a plan for fighting the Islamic State, as required in the fiscal 2016 defense authorization bill.

The law (PL 114-92), enacted late last year, demanded the administration send Congress the details of its strategy against the terrorist organization by Feb. 15.

Republican lawmakers sharply criticized the Obama administration’s plan to close the Guantanamo Bay detention facility, dismissing it as a "vague menu of options" that fails to recommend any alternative sites in the United States to house terrorist suspects still held at the military-run prison in Cuba.

The Obama administration will bypass the difficult political decision of selecting a single alternative U.S. site for the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, detention facility when it sends Congress its much-anticipated plan for shuttering the controversial prison.

The Pentagon is counting on Congress averting a painful government shutdown when the calendar turns to the new fiscal year on Oct. 1, but the Defense Department’s No. 2 civilian is not ruling out the possibility of a "disastrous" year-long continuing resolution to fund the military.

Roughly half of Americans believe Charles E. Schumer, as the No. 3 Democrat in the Senate, can and should oppose the Iran nuclear deal brokered by the Obama administration, compared to only 21 percent who believe the New York Democrat should hold his fire on the agreement.

Pentagon officials traveled last week to Fort Leavenworth in Kansas, home to the military’s only domestic maximum-security prison, to evaluate it as a potential alternative to the detention facility at Guantánamo Bay, a Defense Department spokesman said Monday.

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand has lifted her anonymous hold on Marine Corps Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr.’s nomination to be the next chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, lining up his confirmation before the Senate departs for the August recess.